


Starting From Zero Got Nothing to Lose

by RurouniHime



Series: Urban Architecture [3]
Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkward Sexual Situations, Boys In Love, Car Sex, Childhood Friends, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff and Humor, Graysexual Newt, M/M, Nostalgia, Past Relationship(s), Post-Break Up, Sequel, Sex in a Car, Switching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-06 15:47:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15198086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: No big deal; it's just a trip down memory lane.(In which cars are swapped for the evening. Because of reasons.)





	Starting From Zero Got Nothing to Lose

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in the Urban Architecture universe, very quickly after Seems to Be Our Only Way, and a while before Got No Plans to Make it Stop. It will make much more sense if you have read Seems to Be first. More spoilery explanations in the end notes if you haven't read the first story.

Newt knows one thing for sure: this bucket seat does not fit him like it used to. 

It’s still like wearing an old, well-loved glove.

The engine sputters the same way it always has, a grunt and a hitch forward as the ignition shuts off. Thomas puts the gear shift into park, then drums his fingers on the steering wheel, squinting out the windshield into the darkness. “This is weird. Is this weird?”

“Should be.” Newt shrugs. “But we had it first.” He’s surprisingly unbothered. Every nerve is singing, the last of the missing pieces finally slotted into place. It shouldn’t feel this clean, this true; the Volvo doesn’t even smell like Thomas anymore. Like them.

Thomas laughs, then cranes his head around to look at him. Newt, slouched in the front seat with his foot up on the dash, feels like a kid again, back when Tommy used to tower over him. He rests his head on his hand, pointing at Thomas with a lazy finger. “Admit it; you’ve missed her.”

“Are you kidding?” Thomas slides a hand lovingly over the dashboard, then slips the keys out of the ignition and into his coat pocket. “I always miss this car.”

 _Me too._ Newt smirks, drinks Tommy in: high collared jacket, messy hair. Plain white t-shirt with the simple scoop of a neckline, something you wear painting, or grunging about in the garage. Smiling. Always smiling, but it’s different now, since he came back. “Well.” Newt hitches up a little, wincing at the ache in the small of his back, and glances around the overlook. The Oakland hills never actually change, not what he remembers anyway. “Got the place to ourselves, seems like. What do you fancy?”

“What I’ve always fancied.” Thomas isn’t even trying to hide it: Newt can feel the look he’s giving him like a flame flickering too near his skin. “How much time do we have?”

“Sonya’s got my car for the evening, so…”

“Hm.”

Suddenly they’re both grinning. Fuck’s sake, they don’t even have to _look_ at each other.

They get out and stretch their legs. Newt sheds his jacket, leaves it in the front seat, then follows Thomas into the back on hands and knees until they’re both sitting, staring through the slotted headrests up front at the glittering stretch of city beyond the drop-off. Foggy oranges, sleepy yellows, piercing blues; the streets below thrum like arteries. Newt shuts the door slowly, cutting off the steady hush of sound. “Ten out of ten, would screw here again.”

Thomas makes a noise between a laugh and a gurgle, and knocks Newt’s shoulder with his own. “You take me to the classiest places, Isaacs.”

Newt shrugs. “How else am I supposed to get into your pants?”

“Wine and dine me, my friend,” Thomas murmurs. He’s looking straight on at Newt’s profile again, not an inch of attention elsewhere. “Buy me nice things.”

“Eh.”

Thomas slowly pushes onto his knees and shuffles forward to nuzzle at Newt’s throat, just below his ear. “Gas up my old car…”

“Now that, I can do,” Newt says, turning into the kiss.

Thomas gets to work unbuttoning Newt’s shirt. 

They get distracted kissing again; Newt rolls Tommy against the back of the seat and presses him down, full bodied, drinking in the sounds he makes. Tasting, savoring. Kissing and kissing and kissing. The leather is old and familiar in his nose, the creak and squeak like old friends. Thomas knocks an elbow against one of the blunt buckles sticking out of the seat and hisses a quiet _ouch._ They lose both their shirts. Thomas locks his arms around Newt’s neck and his legs at Newt’s hips, and they have yet to make it out of their pants, and it’s sharp and clumsy and awkward as fuck.

“Don’t remember it being so dark,” Newt says when he pulls upright to uncrick his spine and has trouble discerning Thomas’s features in the gloom.

“I think they’re missing a streetlamp.” Thomas struggles upright, sinewing his long legs out of Newt’s way and losing a shoe in the process. “Yep. That one’s out.”

He points out the window behind Newt, and Newt strains into the darkness, but can’t make out the offending pole. He tugs Thomas out of the way and flops onto the seat, wriggling down flat on his back and stretching his arms overhead as best he can. “Don’t remember it being the size of a dresser drawer either.”

Thomas scoffs. “Please. It was always the size of a drawer.” He darts down, clamps his teeth on Newt’s lower lip, and drags him into another lengthy kiss. Newt whines in the back of his throat, Thomas thrusts his chin up without thinking, and—

“Ow?” Newt offers, even though Thomas’s hand, shoved hastily between Newt’s head and the door, has cushioned the blow well enough. He grimaces up at the door paneling. “I remember _that.”_

Thomas’s fingers curl into his hair. He hums a response, already busy nibbling at the soft space under Newt’s chin. “Me too.”

“Well,” Newt manages amidst his ministrations, “we are a bit taller.” 

Another snort. “Don’t drag me into this. I was done growing by the time I was nineteen, you’re the one who shot up fifteen feet.”

“Fifteen feet? Really?” He can’t curb the snicker, which turns into an outright laugh as Thomas wrestles his jeans off of him.

“So much freakin’ leg,” Thomas grumbles around the tube of lube he has jammed between his teeth, bundling his own trousers off and hurling them over the seatback into the cargo area to join Newt’s. He pauses, looks again, gloriously bare-chested, with one hand settled fingertips-only on Newt’s stomach. He grabs the tube from his mouth. “Roomier. Could just go back there.”

Newt sighs, long and loud. “And here I thought you wanted to relive your glory days, but if you just want to go through your life half-arsed, I suppose—”

Thomas whaps him with a sock only to lean down over him, hitching his way comfortably between Newt’s thighs. Newt tucks up to help, and settles against Tommy in the cradle of his lap. The car jounces, and down in the undercarriage, the axles squeak. Thomas palms a condom packet, opens the tube and slicks up his fingers. Newt lifts his head up to watch, then thumps back down with a groan. “Too fucking _dark.”_

What little light there is shafts directly over Thomas’s face when he raises his head. His eyebrow quirks. “You’re right, this is fucking inexcusable, give me your phone, I’m lodging a complaint with the ombudsman—”

Newt smothers Thomas’s words by hauling him down into a messy kiss.

Back seat’s definitely not big enough for this, especially once Thomas is in him, fingers tight and high on Newt’s thigh, one knee down in the footwell and the other crammed between Newt’s hip and the back of the seat. The windows are already opaque with fog, condensation collecting on the sills. Thomas’s whispers fill the car, the shuff of Newt’s hands on their endless trek over Tommy’s body, and then the stuttered half-words punched from them both, the strident squeals and creaks of old metal and leather. Toward the end, Thomas shudders down atop him, pressed together hip to chest, his hair damp over his brow, his mouth brushing Newt’s with every thrust, an eternity of broken kisses, the nip of teeth, the tracery of tongue. Newt’s heel thunks off the window behind Thomas, and Thomas’s hand slithers up again to protect the crown of his head.

When Thomas comes, a shiver rolls up his body all the way to his head. He immediately latches onto Newt’s mouth, his hand wiggling in between them. One swipe, one pull, and Newt’s gone, head tipped back off the bench seat’s edge, vision snapping white, Thomas’s lips a humid fumble against his throat. Thomas’s hand replaces his mouth as he drops out of the kiss with a full-bodied sigh. His thumb drifts over Newt’s lip and stops.

Muddled by his orgasm, Newt slinks his tongue out and catches Thomas’s thumb with his teeth.

Thomas’s head pops up. He blinks. “Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?”

“What?” Newt snorts into laughter. “No, that was _your_ thumb, at… _What?”_

Thomas’s guffaw is hard, and contagious.

“Shit,” he says a few minutes later, shifting his shoulder against the leather back of the seat. “Forgot how much it heats up in here.”

Newt wipes his brow with his forearm and squirms far enough out from under Thomas to crank down the window. Then he collapses back onto the seat, garnering an _oof_ from his companion.

“Worth it,” he slurs into Thomas’s throat.

A hand alights on his nape. “Definitely.” Thomas exhales a contented sigh.

A few minutes of quiet, lengthening breathing. Newt reaches up, tracing his fingers along the rim of the window. The tips come away wet. “I couldn’t even be in here,” he says, thoughtful. 

“Hmm?”

“When you sold it to Sonya.” The frame gives way to soft, thin fabric above the window. Newt’s nail catches on a slit in the material. “Made me physically ill to be in here.”

Thomas goes gradually still. Even his breathing quiets. Newt hears him swallow.

“I didn’t want to sell it.” There’s an old hurt in his voice, a crack lining each word. “Mom needed the money, but…”

Newt nods. Even talking about that time curls a weight in his belly.

“I wouldn’t let her, not until your mom asked. That was… acceptable.” Thomas looks up at Newt. His eyes, naturally dark, are brimming with memory. “Keeping it in the family, kind of.”

Newt strokes the strands of hair away from Thomas’s ear and kisses the pinch between his brows. The cooler air from outside has finally slunk through the heat, pooling around Newt’s bare ankles and teasing his flank. After a second, Thomas reaches out as well, knocking his knuckles against the driver’s side headrest. “Feels like I never left.”

Newt runs a hand down the center of his back. 

“Man,” Thomas murmurs. “This car has been places.”

“If these…” Newt screws up his face. “Padded wall panels could talk.”

Thomas smiles at Newt, looking punch drunk. He sputters into a sudden laugh. “Think she knows what we’re doing in her car?”

“Trying not to think about it, I’d say.” Tommy’s right: it _is_ weird. Weird and wonderful. If he did nothing else, Newt needed this circle closed.

“How’m I going to look her in the eye?” Thomas sighs, and Newt clenches the hand in his dark hair into a gentle fist.

“Don’t worry. I brought bleach wipes.”

Thomas hauls himself into a sitting position, looking affronted. “This is leather, you heathen.”

Newt shoves him. “You know what I mean.” He picks at the cracked seat edge. Not dry enough to tear their naked skin, but it’s definitely seen better days. “Leather’s easy to clean.”

“Well.” Thomas bounds up on his knees and nearly smacks his head on the roof. “I can tell you one thing that hasn’t been done in this car.”

“What’s that?”

“Me.”

Newt looks at him. “Really? Surely we…”

Thomas shakes his head.

_“Never?”_

“Nope.”

“Not even that spring break? When we won that movie pass for the drive-in.”

“Couch. And your bed. Never in the car.”

“Huh.” For an instant, he sees the most pristine image of Tommy flat across this seat, himself hovering over him, but a heartbeat later, it’s sallow, vague at the edges, and the Tommy in it is not the kid he should have been, but someone in between then and now. Not a memory. A wish, formed of regret, frustration, ages after Tommy left. 

Newt frowns at the ceiling, then sits up too. “And you want me to do you in this car?”

“Absolutely.”

Maybe this is how Thomas comes full circle.

Newt shows him a bruised elbow, pointing at tender flesh. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, you know.”

Thomas kisses his elbow, then tips backward, pulling Newt on top of him.

He takes his time getting Thomas ready. Sets the second condom aside, uses liberal amounts of lube. Watches his face and the flicker of his fingers into and out of fists. Tommy doesn’t do this very often.

There’s not much talk this time, but it’s easy getting himself in gear again, even after coming once. Newt has a hundred things about Tommy he could turn to, when he’s not utterly overwhelmed: he sets his nose to Thomas’s throat and inhales, searches out the hints of cologne and the manic flutter of that heartbeat, tracks each mole with his fingers. Thomas’s body, fidgety and stirring further, is a well-thumbed atlas to him. He eases his fingers into Thomas again, two for a bit, then three, digs his thumb lightly at the skin just behind his balls, and Thomas unfolds like an oft-read book, his head thrown back and his mouth dropped open. Newt kneads the hinge of Thomas’s hip, trails his palm through the coarse hair arrowing down Thomas’s belly, follows the tide of gooseflesh with his mouth as it forms, nibbles at Thomas’s jaw until his breathing changes, drifts ragged, hitches at his whole body with each inhalation, and that’s enough for Newt, more than enough. 

“Come here.” He pulls Thomas upright into his lap, kneeling precariously on the bench seat with their mouths less than an inch apart. It’s hot and damp between their bellies again. “Like this.” This way, Thomas controls the speed, the pressure. Everything. Newt rolls the condom on himself and sits back on his heels so Thomas can bring them together. 

Watching Thomas’s face, he’s glad he took the time. Thomas’s mouth opens in a weak huff and stays that way as he lowers himself down onto Newt. The crease between his brows turns pained, his eyes squinch shut; his hands fret over Newt’s shoulders and squeeze, and then with a sigh, he’s down. Newt grits his teeth against the heat, strokes up and down Thomas’s back, waiting it out, kissing Thomas’s cheek. Inhaling the scent of him. 

And then Thomas moves.

He doesn’t even try to stay quiet, making Newt wonder why _he_ ever did. Chest to chest like this, it’s impossible not to feel every clench, every ripple as Tommy rides him, impossible not to _understand_ the need for every single gasp and curse. Thomas is an endless source of noise, hunched over to avoid the ceiling with both arms in a fierce clutch around Newt’s body. His head rests on Newt’s shoulder, face pressed into the side of Newt’s throat. Every sound he makes is magnified, right at the shell of Newt’s ear, sounds Newt has _missed._ God, he’s missed them, this. Thomas’s fingers dig at Newt’s shoulder blades with each roll of their hips. He mumbles half-words, whispers a string of sibilance Newt can’t decipher. Toward the end, when Thomas’s every breath is a sharp hitch, when the sound of it hisses in and out of his nose, Newt turns into the bared arc of Tommy’s throat and nuzzles, mouths, sucks, until Tommy’s thighs seize at his sides and he clamps on tight, shudders over the edge.

When Newt comes to himself, Thomas still breathing hard in his arms, another car has parked across the way. “Shit.” He rubs a hand over his face, but whoever they are, they’ve left the Volvo well to its end of the overlook, tucked in the shadow offered by the busted lamp.

“Mm?” Thomas mumbles. He sounds exhausted.

“We’re not alone,” Newt sing-songs into his ear. Thomas slumps.

“Have they no decency?” The whine turns upward beautifully, and Newt smothers his chuckles into the side of Thomas’s neck.

It turns to kissing. Naturally. Long, sloppy kisses full of tongue and teeth, Thomas easing down on his back again with Newt slumped atop him. God, Thomas’s _mouth._ He’ll never get enough, never.

**

The crickets are going. Newt can hear the fog horn out in the bay, and the low level hum of Oakland at night. Somewhere close down the hill, a car honks, and Thomas comes fully awake with a snort. “Mmwhere’s my shirt?”

Newt’s not sure, exactly. “Back there?” He points with one finger over the seat, not moving his arms from where he’s got them cocked behind his head. It’s a nice night.

“Pants are back there.” Thomas scuffs a hand over his forehead, disentangling the two of them with sleepy squirms and wandering hands. Newt catches him halfway up, lifts into a kiss, and Thomas wilts back onto him with a groan. “Time s’it?”

Newt smirks, adjusting so that he’s half atop Thomas, pressed near enough that he imagines he might feel his pulse as well as his own. “Nearly time to get cited.”

“Eleven then.” Thomas tosses an arm over his eyes. “Find my clothes.”

The trousers are indeed in the back, as is Newt’s shirt. But not Thomas’s. “Maybe up front?”

Thomas is half turned, one hand digging between the seat and the back rest. “Think it’s jammed in here,” he grunts. Newt scratches his chest and leans between the front seats, but there’s only the bag he brought, and he’s not cleaning up the car out here on the overlook. Boxers: whereabouts unknown.

“What’s this?” Thomas asks. He wriggles around a little, elbow jigging back and forth, then pulls something up.

“Would you stop digging for change,” Newt grumbles, dragging the words out.

“No, really,” Thomas starts, then falls quiet, squinting at whatever’s in his hand. 

Latex. Looks like a crumpled up condom. “You lose it down there earlier?”

“Nuh-uh.” Thomas holds it up to the light and they both freeze.

“Dental dam.”

“What?” Thomas squeaks, dropping it, then brushing it off his chest in a flurry of hands. Newt shies away from it where it hits him on the thigh and falls into the footwell.

 _“Used_ dental dam, oh my god.”

Thomas pales. He and Newt share a look, then a glance at the seat on which they are lying. A second later, both are scrambling upright. “Clothes. Now.”

They locate Thomas’s shirt between the passenger seat and the middle console, crammed next to the belt buckle, then Newt kicks open the door facing away from the other car and gets out, shimmying into his trousers with a couple hops. Thomas spills out beside him with his trousers already on, drags his t-shirt over his head, then dashes around the car, lunging into the driver’s seat. He turns the ignition before Newt even has his door closed, and they back out with a squeal of tires.

They drive down the hill in silence for a while, until Thomas starts to laugh. 

“Oh my god,” Newt wheezes, crumpling forward in his seat with his hands over his face. “Oh my god.”

“Well, shit, Sonya,” Thomas chirps, and Newt chokes, he’s laughing so hard. 

“Not a word about this to her. Ever.”

Thomas gapes at him. “You think I’m going to tell her we found her used prophylactic while we were _fucking in her backseat?”_

Newt bats him into silence with both hands. “Shh, shut it, _shut up.”_

But Thomas’s laughter is loud and beautiful, and Newt can’t help but join him.

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> In Seems to Be Our Only Way: The Volvo used to be Thomas' car when they were teenagers, and is the site of his and Newt's first time together. When Thomas moved away, he sold the car to Newt's mom, who gave it to Sonya as a graduation present.
> 
> Of course I had to take the title from Tracy Chapman's [Fast Car](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwrHwZyFN7M), though the story the song tells has very little to do with this fic. I adore that song.


End file.
